does anyone else miss reel to reel? I have been looking at Pioneer 909's and Revox units.
recently saw an all black 909 for sale . rare.
for those still using R2R...are there sources for new tape(not just unused 30 yr old tape)? .
if so what is the quality?
your advice will be appreciated.
ready to accept the fact that parts will be difficult .
have plently of good vinyl to record from...and some think I live in the past.

back in the day an LP would be recorded onto R2R tape and then stored. wasn't unusual to find a classic to have been on the turntable only once or twice. the sound was 'warmer'. audio fanatics would suspend their turntables using clear mono line to shock proof the turntable. we worked hard to get great sound. one neg. with tape was hiss.

always wondered why more people didn't use high end /high fidelity /stereo vcr's to record music onto VHS tape...I did this throughout the 80's/90's ....even highest quality tape was cheap....great when some FM station would run a commercial free marathon ..... hrs of great analog recording...... had some VHS tapes with nearly 6hrs of music ...

fixj wrote:back in the day an LP would be recorded onto R2R tape and then stored. wasn't unusual to find a classic to have been on the turntable only once or twice. the sound was 'warmer'. audio fanatics would suspend their turntables using clear mono line to shock proof the turntable. we worked hard to get great sound. one neg. with tape was hiss.

always wondered why more people didn't use high end /high fidelity /stereo vcr's to record music onto VHS tape...I did this throughout the 80's/90's ....even highest quality tape was cheap....great when some FM station would run a commercial free marathon ..... hrs of great analog recording...... had some VHS tapes with nearly 6hrs of music ...

I was typnig up a response with this info in it. Yes HiFi Vcrs are great to use for this purpose. In addition they are now dirt cheap and so are the tapes (while they last).

When I had my restaurant I bought a Vcr from GW for $15.00 and recorded several 8 hour tapes taken off satellite radio.
It worked out great.

does anyone else miss reel to reel? I have been looking at Pioneer 909's and Revox units.
recently saw an all black 909 for sale . rare.
for those still using R2R...are there sources for new tape(not just unused 30 yr old tape)? .
if so what is the quality?
your advice will be appreciated.
ready to accept the fact that parts will be difficult .
have plently of good vinyl to record from...and some think I live in the past.

I had a Sony RTR in 1968 when it was cutting edge. It had a built in amp and I had a Garrard TT hooked to it and a tuner. I recorded a lot from Luxembourg at the time. It was great. If it had a problem at the time it was that finding a cut on a reel to reel is hard work unless you had a pad and wrote down the tick numbers. That was too much trouble for guys like me to do, as I had trouble just putting a label on the reels.
Then cassettes hit. They were 30 min, 60 min, 90 min and made it all less work and they were more durable. Depending on your system, cassettes sounded just as good and were more durable. Cassettes killed RTR, and this before the Walkman existed. Cassettes were just better. My first was an excellent Grundig I bought in Pfullendorf.
8 track came along later and was a train wreck, but I played some that.

These days, you can record on CDs and DVDs and play them through your TV on most DVD players. (None of it is as easy as a hard drive of course.) No reel to reel is going to be able to approach DVD except in the "cool factor", and so I do need one.

RTRs look cool, but in fact are best used to hook up back ground music you don't intend to change often.

As a side note, tapes are not cheap. Decent CDs are about a dime. You can burn one, play it and toss it at the end of the day.

fixj wrote:agree with most of what you said, however I recall 8 track introduced ahead of cassettes. was never a fan of either.

Cassettes were very good. In fact, they still are, as are some of the reel to reel. On both, there are some really high end gear, but I was just speaking on average home audio stuff. I have a cassette recorder in the bar that still makes tapes only Tom could tell from the original, and no one could tell from a reel to reel.

I don't know when actual invention of these things occurred, but as I lived through it all, 8-track was latter. 8-track lacked sound quality, but it was made for cars, kinda like ipod music that rules today. What it had was the computer like ability to skip around around an album as opposed to the wind/rewind of a cassette. In our now computer age, it sounds silly, but that was the selling point, and it sold me at the time. In our homes we played LPs.